In building construction, after either a basement or a crawl space has been completed, floor joists are installed and decking material is nailed to the floor joists to form a deck. The decking material is typically plywood, oriented strand board, composite particle board, or the like. Once the deck is formed, external and internal walls are constructed and nailed to the deck. If the building is multilevel, another set of floor joists is secured on top of load bearing walls and decking material is nailed into place onto the additional set of floor joists to form another deck. This process is repeated until all of the levels of the building are complete and a roof is constructed onto load bearing walls of the top level. The upper surface of these decks is typically the surface upon which flooring materials, such as carpet, tile, linoleum, wood, stone, or the like, is directly laid and/or secured. During new construction, remodeling or rebuilding, it is frequently necessary to replace or overlay damaged or contaminated decking material with new decking material.
Construction projects typically take at least several months to complete, during this time the upper surface of the deck is exposed to rain, snow, tracked-in mud, joint compound, dust, saw dust, paint, and other materials. Thus, the decking material often absorbs moisture causing edge swelling, raises-up, warps, and delaminates The decking material can also become caked with these materials and the decking material is virtually impossible to clean effectively because it has rough surfaces. From a cosmetic standpoint, the decking material looks very bad when covered with this contamination. Additionally, the adhesive used to secure certain flooring materials may not adhere effectively to the decking material because of this contamination and work loose prematurely. Furthermore, there are environmental issues as dust and other materials remaining on the decking material after construction are trapped below the flooring material and may eventually work their way out from under the flooring material to create problems for occupants with allergies to such materials. When damage and/or contamination are severe, it is necessary for the builder to incur significant costs to sand, treat or seal the existing decking material or to replace the existing decking material with new decking material before the final flooring is installed.
It is noted that other types of decks and floors can also be damaged and/or contaminated such as, for example, decks and floors of modular and manufactured housing during construction, decks and floors of trucks, trailers, storage facilities, storage containers, and the like during transportation and/or storage of messy or dirty materials, and new or existing floors whether wood, carpet, tile, linoleum, cement, stone, vinyl, or terrazzo, and the like.
Additionally, builders frequently incur significant costs installing neutral colored carpeting, wood floors, tile and the like in “spec” properties simply to cover up the contamination so they look presentable to prospects. This is obviously very expensive and often may need to be removed and replaced to satisfy a buyer, incurring further unanticipated expense. Accordingly, there is a need in the art for improved materials and methods for protecting decks and/or floors.